A GUIDE TO GUIDES
July 25, 2011 01:51 PM | General
The 2011 West Virginia University football guide is scheduled to arrive later this week, this year’s 208-page publication stuffed with enough facts and figures to keep even the casual Mountaineer fan busy for days on end.
Just how much longer the NCAA permits schools to print these things is a topic that seems to crop up every summer, especially after the period of excess seven or eight years ago when some football guides had grown to more than 600 pages with the thick covers, the expensive color photography and all the bling football recruits could ever hope to see (and most likely ignore).
West Virginia’s never got quite that exorbitant, maxing out at 400 pages in 1999 and then declining to 368 in 2004 before the NCAA mandated football guides be capped at 208 pages in 2005.
When I was a WVU student working in the department in the late 1980s, and was required to grab these things off the delivery truck, you could get about 40-50 books in a box and it was still a semi-tolerable experience transporting them into the Coliseum. But when War and Peace came out in ’99, only about 10-15 of those bad boys could fit into a box and it took a small crane to get them into the storage room. We actually went through a couple of wheels on the old dolly moving them around campus.
That ’99 guide (with quarterback Marc Bulger and Don Nehlen on the cover) had everything: player feature stories, fancy computer-generated graphics, a 19-page spread on Nehlen, eight pages on Bulger (including his reasons for switching jersey numbers), anything you could ever want to know about the weight room, and even a half page devoted to Mountaineer Field’s new playing surface (Astro System 2000 Turf 12 for those of you interested).
Imelda Marcos' closet was less extravagant.
I can still see poor Mickey Furfari trying to stuff two of those things into his attaché case, wistfully recalling the days when a reporter could get two or three of them into their back pocket at the same time.
I’m too young to remember stuffing media guides into my pockets, but I have seen them and Mickey is right, you could. The 1945 guide measured 5 ¾ inches by 4 ¼ inches and was all of 29 pages. The first four pages consisted of photos of AD Legs Hawley, interim coach Ira Rodgers, assistant AD Lowry Stoops and a pictorial of West Virginia’s four servicemen: Bill Kern, Dyke Raese, Whitey Gwynne and Forrest Crane. The book took about 20 minutes to write and another 15 minutes to edit.
By 1952, the guide was expanded to 8 ½ by 5 ½ and featured thumbnail sketches of the players. It grew to 64 pages in 1957, and two years later, the first color photo made its way onto the front cover - a posed shot depicting quarterback Danny Williams calling out the signals to the ’59 squad with the stadium scoreboard appearing in the background.
The football guide remained roughly the same dimension and size until 1969, when it grew to 8 ½ by 11 during Jim Carlen’s final year coaching the Mountaineers. It turned out to be Carlen’s big sendoff.
Easily my favorite media guide cover was the ’74 issue featuring Coach Bobby Bowden and wide receiver Danny Buggs standing alongside a fence out at Cooper’s Rock. I am sure people spent more time looking at that cover than the guide’s contents.
Bowden is decked out in a spiffy gold blazer, navy pinstriped pants, white shirt, navy blue tie and a slick pair of white and black wingtips that would make anything Frank Gorshin ever put on seem cheap.
Buggs is dressed in a black three-piece suit with white pinstripes, a black silk shirt and a white tie wide enough to make Beechurst passable on a busy Monday morning. And topping it all off are Buggs’ white platform shoes. Can you imagine what was going through the minds of the hikers seeing those two guys walking out there to do their Mod in the Mountains photo shoot?
They had to be either highly amused or extremely frightened.
In 1977, the practice of including a men’s basketball preview in the book ended at about the same time it went to 80 pages (1978). In 1982, color photos were introduced on the inside (only to be later banned by the NCAA) and two years after that, the guide finally hit the 100-page mark. Then 15 years later, those 400-page monsters were the norm.
Today, football guides are once again a much more manageable size, which makes the kids pulling them off the truck much happier as well as those of us required to carry them around.
Come to think of it, try dropping one of those 400-pagers on your big toe. I did once and it made me wish the Nehlen spread was 17 pages shorter, Bulger had kept his No. 10 jersey, and the weight room was still a mysterious place.
Just a little food for thought when you start scanning this year’s book.
Just how much longer the NCAA permits schools to print these things is a topic that seems to crop up every summer, especially after the period of excess seven or eight years ago when some football guides had grown to more than 600 pages with the thick covers, the expensive color photography and all the bling football recruits could ever hope to see (and most likely ignore).
West Virginia’s never got quite that exorbitant, maxing out at 400 pages in 1999 and then declining to 368 in 2004 before the NCAA mandated football guides be capped at 208 pages in 2005.
When I was a WVU student working in the department in the late 1980s, and was required to grab these things off the delivery truck, you could get about 40-50 books in a box and it was still a semi-tolerable experience transporting them into the Coliseum. But when War and Peace came out in ’99, only about 10-15 of those bad boys could fit into a box and it took a small crane to get them into the storage room. We actually went through a couple of wheels on the old dolly moving them around campus.
That ’99 guide (with quarterback Marc Bulger and Don Nehlen on the cover) had everything: player feature stories, fancy computer-generated graphics, a 19-page spread on Nehlen, eight pages on Bulger (including his reasons for switching jersey numbers), anything you could ever want to know about the weight room, and even a half page devoted to Mountaineer Field’s new playing surface (Astro System 2000 Turf 12 for those of you interested).
Imelda Marcos' closet was less extravagant.
I can still see poor Mickey Furfari trying to stuff two of those things into his attaché case, wistfully recalling the days when a reporter could get two or three of them into their back pocket at the same time.
I’m too young to remember stuffing media guides into my pockets, but I have seen them and Mickey is right, you could. The 1945 guide measured 5 ¾ inches by 4 ¼ inches and was all of 29 pages. The first four pages consisted of photos of AD Legs Hawley, interim coach Ira Rodgers, assistant AD Lowry Stoops and a pictorial of West Virginia’s four servicemen: Bill Kern, Dyke Raese, Whitey Gwynne and Forrest Crane. The book took about 20 minutes to write and another 15 minutes to edit.
By 1952, the guide was expanded to 8 ½ by 5 ½ and featured thumbnail sketches of the players. It grew to 64 pages in 1957, and two years later, the first color photo made its way onto the front cover - a posed shot depicting quarterback Danny Williams calling out the signals to the ’59 squad with the stadium scoreboard appearing in the background.
The football guide remained roughly the same dimension and size until 1969, when it grew to 8 ½ by 11 during Jim Carlen’s final year coaching the Mountaineers. It turned out to be Carlen’s big sendoff.
Easily my favorite media guide cover was the ’74 issue featuring Coach Bobby Bowden and wide receiver Danny Buggs standing alongside a fence out at Cooper’s Rock. I am sure people spent more time looking at that cover than the guide’s contents.
Bowden is decked out in a spiffy gold blazer, navy pinstriped pants, white shirt, navy blue tie and a slick pair of white and black wingtips that would make anything Frank Gorshin ever put on seem cheap.
Buggs is dressed in a black three-piece suit with white pinstripes, a black silk shirt and a white tie wide enough to make Beechurst passable on a busy Monday morning. And topping it all off are Buggs’ white platform shoes. Can you imagine what was going through the minds of the hikers seeing those two guys walking out there to do their Mod in the Mountains photo shoot?
They had to be either highly amused or extremely frightened.
In 1977, the practice of including a men’s basketball preview in the book ended at about the same time it went to 80 pages (1978). In 1982, color photos were introduced on the inside (only to be later banned by the NCAA) and two years after that, the guide finally hit the 100-page mark. Then 15 years later, those 400-page monsters were the norm.
Today, football guides are once again a much more manageable size, which makes the kids pulling them off the truck much happier as well as those of us required to carry them around.
Come to think of it, try dropping one of those 400-pagers on your big toe. I did once and it made me wish the Nehlen spread was 17 pages shorter, Bulger had kept his No. 10 jersey, and the weight room was still a mysterious place.
Just a little food for thought when you start scanning this year’s book.
TV Highlights: Big 12 Baseball Tournament Quarterfinal
Friday, May 22
Steve Sabins, Gavin Kelly, Maxx Yehl | Kansas State Postgame
Friday, May 22
Wren Baker | May 19
Tuesday, May 19
NCAA Selection Show
Wednesday, May 13
